Scripture Daily

Context No. 858 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 13:6-13: in context

6He spoke this parable. “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7He said to the vine dresser, ‘Behold, these three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and found none. Cut it down! Why does it waste the soil?’ 8He answered, ‘Lord, leave it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9If it bears fruit, fine; but if not, after that, you can cut it down.’” 10He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath day. 11Behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years. She was bent over and could in no way straighten herself up. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” 13He laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and glorified God.

Jesus tells a short, unsettling parable. A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and for three years he came looking for fruit on it and found none. Cut it down, he tells his gardener; why should it go on using up the soil? It is a fair verdict; a tree that only takes and never gives is wasting the ground. But the gardener pleads for it. Sir, let it alone this year also, he says, until I dig around it and put manure on it. Then if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

Notice what the reprieve actually is. It is not a shrug, not the owner simply lowering his standards and deciding fruit does not matter after all. The tree is still expected to bear. What the gardener buys it is time, and along with the time, work: he will dig around its roots and feed it, doing everything that can be done to make fruit possible. That is a truer picture of God's patience than we usually imagine. When judgment is deserved and does not fall, the delay is not indifference; it is grace actively at work, breaking up the hard ground around us, feeding us, laboring to bring out of us the fruit that has not come yet. And then, in the very next scene, Jesus shows what that cultivating grace does when it reaches a person: he sees a woman bent double for eighteen years, calls her over though she never asked, and straightens what had been bent for almost two decades. The barren are given another season, and the bent are stood upright, by a patience that is always also at work.

The fruitless tree was given one more year, not as a shrug but with the gardener promising to dig and feed it. What reprieve have I been granted, and am I letting the grace that spared me actually cultivate the fruit it is working for, or just presuming on the extra time?

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